This week you will be attending STUDENT-LED conferences. This means that your child has curated their most important work into a portfolio, and will be presenting that portfolio to you, as well as discussing personal goals. The spotlight will be on your child and this leadership moment for him/her.

Feel free to ask questions about each portfolio piece, as well as give your child compliments. During the goal-setting portion of the conference is a great time to listen to their personal goals and make suggestions based on what you observed from their portfolio and report card.

Due to the format of these conferences, you may have additional questions or concerns you wish to be addressed that are not discussed during the conference. PLEASE NOTE that I will be sending a follow-up survey after conferences. This survey will give you the opportunity to communicate to me any academic, social/emotion, or other issues you would like to further discuss that were not addressed in conferences due to the student-led format. I will then respond via email and/or phone call to further discuss with you.

Thank you for your partnership and looking forward to seeing you this week!Lindsey Petlak

This is the PERFECT way for a teacher to end her week...students so successfully engaged in {math} learning that they are diligently working and producing amazing evidence of their knowledge. Can you imagine 22 students whining and moaning about math ending on a Friday???

I tried to end math 3 times Friday afternoon....but it would not have been in the best interest of the students. They were too deeply engaged at multiple levels of Bloom's Taxonomy to stop. Finally, after 120 minutes straight of non-stop math engagement, I forcibly had to end math...and wailing ensued!

SO...WHAT WERE WE DOING??During math, we engaged in a culminating activity demonstrating concept, skill, and strategy mastery using the iPad app, Educreations. Students were to work out complex fraction addition problems that required equalizing denominators, adding the fractions, and reducing to absolute lowest form.

To demonstrate their knowledge, students had to work out the problem, get the answer, then record themselves demonstrating and narrating the problem using the app. For the first recording/problem, students were able to work with a partner. For the rest, students demonstrated knowledge independently. As a challenge, students showed MULTIPLE ways to solve the same problem.

Such in-depth, thorough explanations show that not only does the student know how to do the complex problems, but he/she also understands WHY each step is completed. Even better, IF a student makes a mistake in the process of the problem, re-watching the recording helps the student, myself, and/or peers catch the error the moment it occurs and then see how that {often} simple error has a ripple effect on the rest of the problem steps.

These activities require multiple levels of thinking on Bloom's Taxonomy and I am very proud of each student's work! Look for an email with links to your child's Educreations recordings in the near future. You may also download the FREE APP, have your child log into our account, and show you their recordings. Some students are still working on these, and links will be sent upon finishing. I hope you will check them out and praise your child for this exemplar work.